When You're More Than A Memory
by ravenbard
Summary: Part 2 of The Rift Trilogy. Follows 'I Fall Without You'. How has fifty years of estrangement affected Tara?
1. Chapter 1

**TITLE:** When You're More Than A Memory

**RATING:** T for oodles of angst, some cussing and a sprinkle of violence

**PAIRING:** Pam/Tara

**SYNOPSIS:** Sequel to 'I Fall Without You'. How has fifty years of estrangement affected Tara?

**DISCLAIMER:** As always, True Blood and its characters do not belong to me. I'm just borrowing them so please don't sue me.

**A/N** – So, I remember some of you requesting a sequel to _I Fall Without You_. For some odd, twisted reason the idea for one came to me when I was at a Disney Classics marathon, specifically The Fox and the Hound. Don't ask, really…I'm not crazy, I just…I have a very active imagination that gets very inventive and drunk during the most random moments. *shrugs* It's a writer thing. So, here's the sequel and there's probably gonna be a sequel to this sequel. Comments, critiques etc. are welcomed.

***** Song used is _My Immortal_ by Evanescence. You're welcome to crank this sad baby up before you start reading.

* * *

The smell of piss, sweat and stale beer hung heavy in the air, an assiduous marker of the unwanted and the unwashed. Men and women lumbered about in the little piss-poor excuse for a bar, their eyes vacant and sunken, their hair lank and matted from grim, sweat and dirt. Frayed and holed clothes barely managed to cling to emaciated and abused bodies, the cotton or polyester blends caked in days of filth and sludge.

Amidst this sub-class of humanity in this septic tank of desolation, desperation and misery sat Tara. The vampire looked like a polished penny amongst the putrid crowd despite her wind-blown and tangled sable air, clothes that were frayed and dusty from her aimless wanderings and obsidian eyes so still and blank that they might as well have been fashioned from a statue.

Tara knocked back a shot of _Bloodsky_, the vampire equivalent of 80-proof whisky. Her only reaction to the almost acidic burn down her throat was the way her throat bobbed as the thick liquid slid down her esophagus. She slammed the shot glass onto the splintered and dented bar top and signaled to the bartender with an almost careless flick of her wrist.

_I'm so tired of being her  
Suppressed by all my childish fears_

A woman's voice, so ethereally haunting that it almost bordered on a sob, drifted from one of the two battered speakers that were barely managing to stay fixed to the wall.

_And if you have to leave  
I wish that you would just leave_

Two verses in and the song was already proving to be a study in melancholy and pain, the singer's voice all but waxing a kind of heartache and loss that would drive the sanest of peoples to hurl their pitiful bodies off the nearest cliff.

_Your presence still lingers here  
And it won't leave me alone_

As if on cue, an image of Pam sprang to the forefront of Tara's mind, sending a ripple of emotion across her lifeless eyes. The vampire's response was to crush the shot glass cradled in her palm; it shattered like so much sugar glass, sending shards to cut into her palm and rain onto the bar top. Rivulets of blood quickly followed, anointing the broken pieces and tinting them red.

_These wounds won't seem to heal  
This pain is just too real  
There's just too much that time cannot erase_

Tara clenched her glass-embedded hand; pain sang from the cuts, a sharp melody that sent shivers down her nerves but it was a welcome reprieve from the torture that was manifesting before her eyes:

Pam. Her blonde hair dancing in the wind as a wicked smirk graced those edible full lips. Eyes cut from the purest of sapphires twinkled out from a face that made mortals and immortals alike weep with envy. A body that was as dangerous and as sinful as the clothes that covered it.

The grinding of Tara's teeth was almost audible as her accelerated healing began pushing out the pieces of glass from their temporary home in her soft flesh. Tara's grip tightened, delaying the process as she tried to push the glass back in; blood starburst around the aggravated wounds, dripping in steady drops from the bottom of her hand but it was a losing battle as the shards began pinging onto the bar top.

_You used to captivate me by your resonating light  
Now, I'm bound by the life you left behind_

"Clean that shit up before youse gets jumped by Drainers," the barkeep snarled under his breath, snapping a stained and grime-crusted cloth at Tara. He watched as Tara diligently cleaned up the blood and glass that decorated the bar top before bunching the cloth in front of her. She arched a menacing eyebrow at him and he growled before slamming a new shot glass in front of her and pouring her another round.

_Your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams  
From your voice it chased away, all the sanity in me_

Tara tossed back the shot, relishing the blistering heat and the smooth finish. She was about to ask for another when two presences appeared at her back, malicious intent pouring off them in waves.

"Ya know," Tara began quietly, her voice dangerously calm as the barkeep obligingly refilled her empty glass, his dark eyes flitting between Tara and the two figures flanking her from behind. "It's one thing to sneak up on a vampire." She threw back her shot. "It's another to sneak up on _me_."

Without so much as a warning, Tara whirled around with preternatural speed and smashed the shot glass into the left one's eye. He howled in abject agony as the glass shattered, spitting fragments into the soft flesh of his cornea. Blood leaked from his eye, twirling a lazy path down his sunburnt and stubbled cheek.

"Bitch!" The second man, with a barrel chest, impossibly broad shoulders and no neck to speak of, unraveled a silver chain from around his hand and whipped it forward in Tara's direction.

_When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears  
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears_

Tara hissed as the silver licked her cheek, slicing open her ebony skin and sending the smell of burning flesh to permeate the air. She darted forward off the bar stool, her eyes suddenly alive with rage but another thick silver chain appeared at her back and wrapped itself around her neck, immediately biting deep into her vulnerable flesh.

_And I held your hand through all of these years  
But you still have all of me_

Tara snarled, a vicious, dangerous sound that bespoke of death. It made the hairs on the back of the barkeep's neck stand erect but he made no attempts to assist the struggling vampire.

Tara, in a move that surprised the man behind her, went slack then backpedaled into him with the force of a freight train. She snapped her head back the instant she felt his warm chest against her back; he bellowed in pain as her head connected solidly with his nose, shattering cartilage and bone, causing his nose to concave into his face.

The silver chain around her neck sagged around her as the man behind let go to cradle his damaged nose. Tara shrugged the chain off, and leapt forward to the man in front of her. He whipped the chain forward and it caught her plain across her lips, sending a spray of blood to burst from the split skin but she paid the wounds no mind as she lunged forward, grabbed a fistful of chubby fingers and yanked the man's hand down. _Hard_.

Bones snapped audibly and one pushed through its prison of sinew, muscle and skin only to poke its jagged edge into the open, the once pristine white bone now dipped in red. The skin around the bone puckered upwards and opened like a morning flower, weeping red nectar.

_I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone  
But though you're still with me,  
I've been alone all along_

The man in front shrieked like a tea kettle as Tara further aggravated the wound by pulling on the man's fingers, exposing more of the jutting bone. The high-pitched noise gargling from the man's throat was so loud it momentarily overpowered the singer's wailing lament of sorrow. The silver chain fell from his fingers and Tara kicked out at it, sending it skittering across the floor and under a table. She closed the distance between her and the man in front and reached out to grip him by the neck, lifting him up until his legs kicked at the air.

"You _must_ come from the land of Stupid," she growled at him, her voice incendiary, her eyes flashing murderous rage. She reached for the protruding bone and applied pressure, watching with absolutely no sympathy as the man screamed, a primal sound that echoed off the dirty bar walls and made the bar patrons flinch.

A movement behind her. Without even looking, she kicked out a booted leg behind her, smiling sinisterly as the flat of her boot came into contact with a soft belly. The man behind her let loose a great "oof!", which was quickly followed by a howl as his internal organs were pulverized. Blood vomited out of his mouth and he choked on the liquid as he tumbled into a nearby table, hit its corner and was sent spinning to the floor. He lay in a fetal position, coughing and spluttering blood, the pallor of his skin fading to a sickly gray with each mouthful of blood he retched out.

"See your buddy there?" Tara sidestepped so that the man she was currently holding in a death grip by the neck could see. "He's dyin'." She nodded satisfactorily as she tightened her fingers around his neck, another frightening smile gracing her blood-strain lips. "As we, well, _I_, speak, his heart is slowing, his pulse growing sluggish." She leaned in and the almost manic expression painting her face caused the man to lose control of his bowels.

The scent of piss, warm, salty and pungent, filled the air around Tara. It was punctuated by the sound of the liquid dripping onto the battered hardwood floors.

Above them, the song had reached its crescendo, the heavy beating of drums shattered intermittently by the wailing of an electric guitar. The combination of instruments, aided by the singer's mournful echo of the last lyric caused an atmosphere of indescribable pain and grief to blanket the bar. It sagged onto Tara's shoulders, seeped into her veins and tugged at the strings of her heavily scarred heart before it moved to slice open parts of her soul that were still heavily bleeding.

_Drip. Drip. Drip_

The sound of the man's urine leaking out from under his jeans relieved Tara of her internal struggle and for that she was grateful.

The vampire returned her feral eyes at her prey, smiling over deliberately elongated fags as her quarry whimpered. She chuckled when she caught sight of his soiled jeans, the sound anything but friendly. "Now, isn't that embarrassing." She lowered the man back onto his unsteady feet and released the grip she had on his neck. She watched as he staggered away from her, clutching his damaged wrist, his eyes wild with fear, his mouth hanging open as he tried to suck in much needed gulps of oxygen. She shook her head and blurred up to him, this time grabbing him by a more intimate and sensitive area. He yowled in a pitch that was decidedly unkind to human ears as she made a twisting motion before her fingers squeezed down on the sensitive flesh.

"I want ya out of this shit hole, ya hear?" Her voice was low, steely with ill-omened intent. When he failed to respond she tightened her hold; tears flowed like twin rivers from his beady eyes and his entire face became pinched with pain.

"Answer me!"

The man nodded frantically, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down as he attempted to swallow the saliva that was pooling in his mouth.

Tara released a disgusted sigh. "Get the fuck up outta here." She let him go and watched him scurry out of the pockmarked door, not even bothering to help out his partner, who was still writhing on the floor, though his movements were becoming less noticeable.

Tara turned to face her audience; the bar patrons who littered random corners of the bar were frozen to their respective seats, fear and panic fairly wafting from their pores as they awaited what Tara would do next.

"Anybody else?" She turned in a circle, holding her arms out. When nobody came forward, she nodded grimly. "I thought so."

_But you still have all of me_

"Turn that fuckin' music off!" Tara hissed as she reclaimed her seat in front of the bar and snagged a handful of tissues from behind the bar to wipe off her hands. The last thing she needed was music to tell her that her life had become a cesspool of misery and pain. Behind her, people were slowly reanimating themselves and the more wily ones immediately zeroed in on the man on the floor, emptying him of his wallet, his blood-stained coat and the gold chain around his wrist. Nobody bothered to check for a pulse.

"Barkeep, pour me another," Tara demanded, her eyes reverting back into a smooth stillness that was unnervingly inhuman.

"I think you've had enough."

Tara's back went ramrod straight, her hand hovering over the freshly poured shot. When the owner of the voice slid into a seat next to her, Tara reached down and wrapped supple fingers around the glass. She brought the drink to her lips, tipped it back and let the mixture of alcohol and blood scorch a path down her throat.

Setting the shot glass back down, she smacked her lips and turned her head.

"Hello, Eric."

**TBC**


	2. Chapter 2

*Song used is _More Than A Memory_ by Garth Brooks. Feel free to listen to this heart puncher of a song as you read.

* * *

Eric Northman was never one for sentiments. Well over a millennia old, emotions were debased things, filthy toys that only humans indulged in, smothered themselves under and often used as tools to manipulate and fuck others over with. To be enslaved by emotions was an act solely reserved for humans and Eric was never one for sullying his hands with such foolishness.

But as the former Viking sat in in some godforsaken shithole of a bar in what city dwellers now called "Cornfield America", emotion was riding him like hormonal teenage boy, chaffing him raw and sending mouths of pain to gnaw its sharp teeth on his nerves.

"You look like shit." He settled for blunt observation as he waited for the tide of emotions to ebb within him. "And that's saying something considering the company you keep." He cast a blue-green gaze around him and curled his lips in disgust at the sight and stench of unwashed, unkempt humans.

"You're welcome to leave anytime," was Tara's flat response. She waved the barkeep over and he was about to pour her yet another shot when Eric coiled his fingers none too gently around the barkeep's wrist.

"If you so much as drop one speck of that _shit_ into this glass, I will rip out your throat." Eric's voice was serenely calm as he spoke but the expression on his face was terrifying.

The barkeep's dark eyes swiveled back and forth between the two vampires, debating between Tara's arctic yet emotionless gaze and Eric's livid ones. Eventually, the sheer magnitude of power and danger emanating from Eric like a tidal wave won out. He gave the blonde vampire a curt nod and Eric released his wrist; the skin around it was mottled purple and smudged blue.

"Who the _fuck_ do you think you are?" Tara turned so that she fully faced Eric, her face positively frightening as obsidian eyes almost glowed red with rage.

Eric snapped out a hand with preternatural speed to grip at Tara's jaw. "You will learn your place." His fingers pressed down on the vulnerable flesh around his hand until bones started cracking under the pressure. "Do not start a fight you cannot hope to win, Tara."

Tara wrenched her jaw away from Eric's grip. Petulance was a dark fire in her eyes as she glared up at the tall vampire. "Why are you here?" Her voice was barely skirting the line of civil but she forced herself to exercise politeness knowing that Eric would not hesitate to put her in her place should she disobey.

"Do not ask questions you already know the answer to." Blue-green eyes, the color of a Northern ocean, bore into Tara's with unflinching intensity. "Go back to her."

Every muscle in Tara's body instantly went rigid, clutching at her bones so tight that they creaked in protest. "Do _not_," she seethed, "mention that _bitch_ in my presence." The rest was said through gritted teeth and Tara fought the overwhelming urge to put her fist through Eric's face. Instead, she gripped at the bar top, channeling her pain and anger into the wood beneath her fingers. The wood immediately crumbled.

Eric's arm snaked out again, this time to backhand Tara across the face.

The slap was unforgiving and vicious and Tara's head snapped sideways with such force that it almost broke the bones in her neck. Blood spurted like candy from a piñata as the skin on her lips tore wide open from the impact of Eric's knuckles.

"You will talk about my child, your _maker,_ with _respect_." The last word was almost hissed as a large hand wrapped long fingers around her throat and squeezed. The fingers tightened around her neck like ribbons of steel.

Tara instinctively reached up to pry Eric's hand off of her neck but to no avail. She settled for digging her nails into his skin, leaving half-moon indentations and drawing blood. It crisscrossed down snow-pale skin in obscene lines of red. "I will speak about my _ex-lover_ however I choose." Her tone was completely unapologetic and acerbic even though her voice emerged as strangled what with the grip Eric had on her throat.

Eric's fingers tightened and had Tara been human, her throat would have caved in. "Not in my presence," Eric rumbled, his voice low with contempt and barely contained wrath. He gave Tara's throat another warning squeeze before he released her and watching with uncaring eyes as the young vampire slumped forward a little, one hand massaging her bruised throat. "Go back to her," he repeated.

"I'd rather die," Tara snarled venomously. She hopped off the barstool and was in the midst of edging around the tall vampire when Eric, for the third time, whipped out a hand and slammed her up against the bar top. He pinned her in place, a strategic arm draped over her still bruised throat.

"That can be arranged." Eric's eyes were foreboding, locks of unruly blond hair tumbling haphazardly over his forehead as he leaned in until he was almost nose-to-nose with Tara. "I would kill you now if not for the fact that my child would never forgive me."

Tara struggled valiantly but each small move forward resulted in Eric pressing her back further into the side of the bar top. Bits of splintered wood dug through the thin material of her t-shirt to poke and worry at the soft skin of her back. She snarled acidly up at Eric. "Let. Me. Go." It was not a request.

"No," was Eric's careless reply. He applied dangerous pressure with his arm onto Tara's throat until he was just a hair's breath away from causing serious damage. "Go. Back. To. Her."

Again with those words. Tara shook her head and was absolutely disgusted with herself when she felt her eyes blot over with blood-tears. "No," she choked out, her voice brittle with grief and pain. She felt her heart slice itself a new wound when someone fed an antique jukebox some equally antique quarters and Garth Brook's _More Than A Memory_ began crooning from the machine's speakers.

_People say she's only in my head  
Its gonna take time but I'll forget_

"How fitting," Eric mocked as he cocked his head, listening to the lyrics that drifted over to enveloped the interlocking pair of vampires.

_Drivin' across town just to see if she's home  
Wakin' a friend in the dead of night  
Just to hear him say "it's gonna be alright."_

Eric's enjoyment was momentarily thwarted when Tara slammed her forehead into Eric's face. She almost purred in satisfaction when she successfully broke his nose and blood began leaking out from his left nostril.

Eric, for his part didn't react to the sharp stabs of pain shrieking out from his face. In fact, he was the epitome of calm as he reached up with his left hand, cracked his nose back into alignment and swiped away the small trickle of blood like it was something that happened every day.

He then reached out to slap Tara hard across the face.

Eric snickered with dark amusement when Tara's fangs immediately protracted and she snarled at him, eyes feral.

"That's it," he encouraged, his eyes glinting in an almost manically gleeful fashion. "Get mad. Give me a reason to kill you, _please_."

"I'm right fuckin' here," Tara taunted. She fanned out her arms, uncaring that she was being pinned to the bar, an arm across her throat. She glared up at Eric, goading him with her eyes. "Well? I'm wide fuckin' open you stupid piece of shit. Kill me!"

_When you find the things to do not to fall asleep_  
'_Cause you know she'll be there in your dreams  
That's when she's more than a memory_

Tara was tired, so tired. She was tired of running from memories that hounded her like demon pit bulls, nipping at her heels whenever she came too close to letting her guard down. She was tired of physically finding the lowest, dirtiest places where attracting and picking fights were easier than taking candy from a baby. She was tired of the fact that her dreams brought more pain than reprieve. She was just _tired._

When Eric failed to move, Tara shook her head and barked out a bitter laugh. "Where's your balls, Eric?" She was aiming for his ego, hoping that a well-placed kick to it would cause the older vampire to cave. "Kill me," she sneered dispassionately. "It would be a welcomed relief."

"Are you so willing to leave this life?" Eric was genuinely curious, his expression suitably bewildered by Tara's lack of self-preservation. He stared hard into Tara's eyes and almost flinched when he saw abject resignation in them. "Would you be so cruel as to leave her alone in this world?"

"She left _ME_!" Tara's scream of pain was so acute that the barkeep dropped a Collins glass and several patrons around the bar flinched like they'd be kissed by the tip of a whip.

Tara turned wild eyes on Eric, the agony in them so palpable that the blonde vampire found his throat constricting and his heart to twist in a most terrible way. Instinctively, he loosened the arm he had across Tara's throat but then had to reach out with both hands to clasp the young vampire's shoulders when her knees buckled.

_Took a match to everything she wrote  
Watched her words go up in smoke  
Tore all the pictures off the wall  
But that ain't helping me at all_

"She left me," Tara repeated, her voice broken and monotone. She didn't fight Eric when he sat her back on the barstool and stood before her, his large hands two steady anchors on her shoulders. "She _released_ me, Eric." Her voice threatened to dissolve into a sob. "She released me all because of a _stupid_ fight."

"She is not perfect," Eric replied, his voice soft and pained as he remembered all too clearly the night _he_ severed the maker/progeny tie between him and Pam. Even now, after so many decades, the pain of that night, the look of utter devastation in Pam's eyes, threatened to bring him to his knees.

'_Cause when you're talking out loud and nobody's there  
You look like hell but you just don't care  
Drinking more than you ever drank  
Sinking down lower than you ever sank_

"Go back to her." The words were now a mantra, playing on a loop in Tara's mind even as they repeatedly fell from Eric's lips.

_When you find yourself falling down upon your knees  
Praying to God, beginning Him __**please**  
That's when she's more than a memory_

Tara shook her head vehemently, tangled tendrils of onyx hair whipping about her face. "No," she whispered hoarsely. The very thought of being in close vicinity to her former lover made her want to meet the sun.

"_Vänligen_, Tara." _Please, Tara._

The impassionate plea, spoken in Eric's native tongue, laced with genuine fear caused something to snap in Tara. Her head shot up, revealing eyes that were suddenly flickering with emotion. Eric only reverted back to Swedish when vulnerability was a silver spike in his heart. Also, in all the years she had known him, she had never heard the word fall from the former Viking's lips with such heartfelt honesty. Heart seizing in her chest, she locked dark eyes onto Eric's blue-green ones.

"Is she…"

Eric shook his head, his grip on Tara's shoulders tightening briefly. "No." A haunted look clouded the blue of his eyes. "But if she continues on the path she's on, she will be." There it was again, the sharp sting of emotion and Eric's heart writhed uncomfortably under its prison of curved bone and muscle, unused to such raw stimulation.

The blonde vampire leveled Tara with a gaze that could only be described as desperate and pleading. And swimming amidst this pandemonium of emotions was stark terror. It made Tara afraid, very afraid because Eric didn't fear _anything_. To put such blatant desperation on his face meant that whatever Pam's current situation was, it was bad. Very, very bad.

Tara swallowed her pride, swallowed her pain, swallowed every arbitrary emotion she housed inside of her and forced her mind to clear.

It suddenly didn't matter that Pam had thrown away the most precious of treasures that was their love. It didn't matter that Pam, in a fit of anger, cruelly ripped the bond between them apart. It didn't matter that Pam had slashed her with such caustic words that the contusions they left on her heart were still healing.

Fifty years. It had been fifty years since she last saw Pam. Fifty years of estrangement, of radio silence, of being apart.

None of it mattered.

"Where is she, Eric?" The miasma of fear, of dread was polluting her veins, breathing toxic fumes into her heart. It was at the moment Tara realized that she still loved Pam. How could she not? She wouldn't be wallowing in such misery if she wasn't.

"London." Eric's face pinched at the word and panic flared inside Tara, its hot tongues of fire laving at her rapidly fraying nerves.

"She hates London," Tara replied stupidly as she tried to grapple with recent events, a hard thing to do considering that dread was a tight fist in her throat, choking her.

"Exactly." The look of apprehension and anxiety that played catch across Eric's handsome features made Tara all the more cognizant of Pam's frighteningly ominous condition.

The young vampire shook off Eric's hands and looking more put together and alert than she had in nearly half a century, stood. The barstool screeched in protest as she kicked it out from behind her.

"Address."

Eric immediately slipped a hand into his pocket and fished out a crumpled piece of paper. He pressed it into Tara's outstretched hand, then gripped at her clenched fist when she enclosed her fingers around the slip of paper.

"You _will_ bring her back to me." Blue-green eyes bore into Tara's, almost feverish with pain and fear. "To _us_." He almost crushed Tara's hand in his as he searched the younger vampire's eyes for resolve. "_Promise_ me, Tara."

Tara had never seen Eric so frightened, so _lost_. If she hadn't been witness to such open, naked fear dancing across the former Viking's face, Tara would have bet her undead life that Eric had no capacity to feel.

She let her fangs drop and she brought her wrist to her lips to make a cut. When blood flowed from the single jagged tear, she held it up to Eric who tore open his own wrist then gripped Tara's forearm in a manner that meshed their weeping wrists together.

"I swear upon our blood," Tara intoned solemnly.

Eric nodded, his eyes dark. "I accept your blood oath," he replied just as seriously. He waited until the intermingling of Tara's blood with his own closed their respective wounds then let go. "I will pay you a visit in exactly twenty-eight days." In a very un-Eric gesture, he bent and grazed his cheek across his grand-progeny's cheek. "Twenty eight days, Tara." It was a promise as much as it was a warning.

Straightening to his full height, Eric reached down and tucked a strand of sable hair behind Tara's ear. "Good luck."

He vamp sped out of the bar and Tara watched him go, paralysis momentarily rooting her boots to the ground. Then reality sank in and the very concept of Pam being in any imminent danger spurred Tara into blurring out of the bar.

She had a plane to catch.

_That's when she's more than a memory_

**THE END**


End file.
